Former WCW Star Dies Of Possible Drug Overdose

[Mr. JL]

Former WCW Star Dies Of Possible Drug Overdose

Written by: Keelan Balderson - March 25th, 2008

Former WCW wrestler Chase Tatum of "No Limit Soldiers" fame, was found dead around 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon, reportedly of a drugs overdose. Tatum, who was most recently an actor, was found dead by a friend at his Buckhead home. He was just 34 years of age.

"He was in the process of getting his life back together," his father said Monday evening. "He was confident he was going to turn things around, to live a normal life again without those painkillers."

Tatum retired from wrestling after about two-and-a-half years. But his brief WCW run left him battling severe back problems, leading to a pain pill addiction.

The story has already been picked up by most online news outlets, as have all tragedies since the Benoit double homicide suicide.

credit wrestling-edge.com who prolyl stole it from somewhere else
----

Rest In Peace.

Is wrestling really this rough on the body or is it merely that these pain pills are/were accessable everywhere in pro wrestling locker rooms?

[Hanso Amore]

The guy was only a wrestler for 2 years, and he was only in a touring group for about 4 months.

I don't think this should be a wrestling related death. I think this guy sadly is a victim of a drug related fatality like many others.

[Rammsteinmad]

R.I.P. to the guy. He wasn't in WCW that long, and I seriously doubt anyone would remember that name until reading this, but that doesn't make it any better to think about.

[Kane Knight]

Wrestling tends to attract people with addictive personalities. Addictive personality+any real reason to take drugs almost always=addict.

[Destor]

Hardtime: Wanted Alive



(Note to readers: This column is sort of on the long side. If you would like to leave feedback for this column, you may do so at david12345575@yahoo.com (david12345575@yahoo.com))

Before I begin, let me make something clear to you, the reader. I am, myself, a long time wrestling fan. I grew up on wrestling, and names like Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels were part of my child hood. Over the years I matured, but I still remained a fan. Today I am still a fan, but not with the loyalty I once had. However, I have no ill will towards wrestling. Wrestling is seen by most people to be something that is the black sheep of the entertainment industry, and in the same vein, many wrestling fans will defend wrestling almost regardless of how wrong or right it may actually be. What you are about to read comes from someone who has a neutral standpoint on wrestling. I won't defend my hometown team when they do something wrong, nor will I try to unjustly slander them like fans of their rivals.

That being said, on with the column.

On January 15, 1974, the normally calm and quiet community of Wichita, Kansas was horrified to discover the news of an event in their own neighborhood that would go on to live in infamy. Wichita had started to become the regular stomping grounds for one of modern history’s most notorious and depraved criminals. On that dark day, four members of the Otero family, peaceful and well liked residents of the area, were found dead inside their suburban home. The parents of the family, Joseph and Julie Otero, both in their thirties, were found with their hands and feet bound, having been savagely strangled. One of their sons, Joseph II, was found in a bedroom of the house lying in similar fashion after he too had been strangled to death. The helpless little boy was only nine years old. Josephine, their eleven year old daughter, had her lifeless body discovered hanging from a pipe in the basement. Police began relentlessly searching for the monster who committed these unthinkable acts, but to no immediate avail. From there, six more innocent people in and around Wichita would be ruthlessly killed at the hands of a serial killer who for thirty-one years would be known simply as “BTK”, a self imposed moniker communicated to the police to stand for “Bind them, torture them, kill them”.

The thought of human beings being carried away in body bags is not the most pleasant thing in the world to lothink about, but it’s the harsh reality that arises from these psycho paths remaining uncaught in society. BTK was finally found and arrested back in February of 2005, bringing a long awaited sigh of relief to everyone in Wichita. But some areas that lay host to these kinds of crime scenes never get to experience that sigh of relief. They are done by the serial killers who are elusive enough to never get caught. Human beings like Jack The Ripper, The Zodiac, and The East Area Rapist who are left free to roam the earth, leaving the people in the vicinity of their crime sites to live in constant fear for years afterwards. These are criminals whose abilities to escape the hands of justice are matched only by the depravity of their own human nature. Sadly, there is another serial killer like this on the loose in our society as we speak. The killer I am speaking of is brutal and seemingly heartless, and is alleged to be responsible for the murders of seventy-nine people since 1985. I am very skeptical as to think that all seventy-nine victims were subject to the same guilty party. But that is a moot point. As it is, one single murderer is responsible for many of those deaths. The photo of the BTK victim shows the kind of demented horror a killer like this can bring to the world, and the number of victims on his list is a sign of the urgency with which he needs to be apprehended. But he should to be caught alive… not dead.

When I first heard the news about John Kronus over the summer, I basically had roughly the same thoughts I did when I heard about Chris Benoit. You might not believe this, but that reaction was “Oh, another wrestler died. This time it’s Chris Benoit. What’s good on tv tonight? Oh right, King of Queens. Was this their last season?…” I think you get the idea. I know this is going to seem very strange, being a wrestling fan and all, but Benoit’s huge incident didn’t phase me all that much. Yet another professional wrestler was going to get his own obituary much too soon. I didn’t get shocked at the death of John Kronus, much the same way I didn’t blink twice when I found out about Bam Bam Bigelow or Sherri Martel. That sounds like a thoughtless remark, and it is unfair to label all professional wrestlers as having terrible private problems affecting their health. But the truth of the matter is that so many retired and current professional wrestlers have experienced untimely deaths that it just doesn’t surprise me that much anymore. Who could be next? A lesser known star like Ace Darling? A well remembered mainstream mid carder like Brian Knobs or The Patriot? I don’t mean to sound insensitive, or to judge any of those individuals’ personal lives. They could all be great people for all I know. But things have gotten to the point where someone staying in the business another seven or eight years could mean adding another nail to their coffin… literally. Eddie Guerrero dieing a few years ago was an occasion to me. John Kronus dieing a little over half a year ago was just another Wednesday.

There is a psychological condition commonly associated with soldiers in the military who have been through and seen so many ghastly events involving bloodshed and human fatalities that they begin to become more and more emotionally immune to the dark concept of death. To them, watching someone die could become something that doesn’t seem nearly as shocking as it would be to the average person. I don’t know about you, but there is a version of this condition I am already starting to experience as a long time wrestling fan. If I was in the army and I was aiming down people with a semi automatic weapon on a regular basis, I could accept the fact that seeing people going through high levels of pain and dieing wouldn’t have the same effect on me as it did before. It would be a terrible mental condition to have, but I could accept it, because it came from something that had to happen. But as a wrestling fan I shouldn’t have to feel like hearing about Bam Bam Bigelow’s death is just as common as seeing a baseball game on tv.

That’s when you have to come to you’re senses and realize there is a brazen killer on the loose. A person so vile that they are alleged to be responsible for ending the lives of seventy-nine professional wrestlers since 1985. Some of the names on his list of victims are falsely attributed to him, such as John Tenta and Dino Bravo, who died from unrelated bladder cancer and violence stemming from what was believed to be association with organized crime, respectively. But please, don’t try to tell me, yourself, or anyone else that seventy-nine wrestlers in the last 22 years not living to see their sixtieth birthday is caused by seventy-nine coincidences. Face facts: the earth revolves around the sun, whatever goes up must come down, and the serial killer that needs to be caught is professional wrestling itself. Steroids don’t kill people any more than guns do. The same can be said for pain killers, alcohol, and any illegal drugs. People kill people. The nature of professional wrestling is that person.

I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with the mere idea of professional wrestling in and of itself. Obviously I like it, but I also like to drink Mountain Dew, and I sure don’t want the soda delivery man to risk his life just so I can drink something other than water. If you were a 32 year old professional wrestler with a wife and two sons you spend more time away from than with, you usually wrestle second on the card, you go through every day being sore and in excruciating pain, you’re told you might have what it takes to wrestle higher on the card if you were more muscular, and you’re tormented by the mental and physical anguish of your time away from loved ones and a seemingly thankless job, would you just suck it up, keep working hard, and stay on the right track, even if you don’t move very far on that track? Or do you prove to be too weak mentally to handle everything honestly? Fatigue makes cowards of us all, and there’s no greater fatigue than that of a day in, day out arduous lifestyle.

In the sixties, Charles Manson formed his own cult like group dubbed as The Manson Family, and influenced them to think like he did. Manson had believed that the Beatles’ White Album, released during that time period, had contained hidden messages meant for him and his Family. He believed that one of the songs, Helter Skelter, held a message that told Manson of a racial apocalyptic war between whites and blacks that would take place, with blacks coming out victorious. Manson and his Family were supposed to hide away from society until the war was over, and when the black race realized that they could not govern themselves, they would begin to follow Manson and his Family. Manson thought that he and his followers were supposed to instigate this war by committing murders to cause racial friction in society. The crimes were ordered and the murders were carried out, and he and his family had been arrested after his Family killed multiple victims. Charles is now in jail, which is where he will likely stay for the remainder of his life. Even though it can’t be proven he physically committed any of the murders himself, the law had said that anyone guilty of conspiracy for murder is guilty of murder.

I must agree full heartedly with that ruling. Manson made his Family think that those murders had to take place because a war had to be started so they could rule the post apocalyptic world. As crazy at that sounds, people actually believed it. This is much the same way that wrestlers are influenced by the nature of the business to feel they need to use steroids in order to get higher places on the card. They know full well about how anabolic steroids increase the risk of liver damage (including tumors on the liver as well as liver cancer), high blood pressure, damage to the heart, offsetting the pigmentation of the skin, retaining fluids, kidney tumors, increased cholesterol, as well as seeing increases in aggression, dubbed by some as ‘roid rage’. Going six feet under at an early age from liver damage is what they know is a reasonable outcome. But they also know the risk they have to take to not have a well built body in that industry. I don’t know the exact percent of the male wrestlers in the WWE that have very high levels of muscle mass with relatively low levels of body fat, but I’m guessing it’s pretty high. If you and another wrestler have about the same abilities, but you look like Road Dogg while the other guy is built like Triple H, who do you think will get pushed harder? Even for someone who goes to the weight room every day, it’s very difficult to have the same amount of muscle mass that Batista has with his same level of body fat. I’m not accusing anybody individually of taking the juice, but I would be naïve to think no pro wrestlers in the business are using it right now.

Just as The Manson family brutally killed their victims because Charles Manson lead them to believe they needed to, so too have wrestlers been influenced by the immense physical pressure they experience from wrestling to abuse pain killers. The white label on the bottle says that taking any more than a certain number of pills every day could cause increased health risks. But your body is screaming to you that there’s just no possible way you can go through the pain of yet another excruciating back drop. Who will you listen to? Andrew Martin, known as Test during his WWE days, has said that every time you take a bump, it is the about the same as if you were to get your car rear ended at 20 miles an hour. I don’t know if you’ve ever had your car rear ended, but even at a slow speed it can feel like the same impact of someone hitting you in the back with a brick.

Getting rear ended many times a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year, every year you stay injury free, is going to hurt quite a bit. You know abusing pain killers can put your future on a dark, winding road that only goes downhill, and you’re not even sure if your brakes are going to work. But if you’re the Champion of your company, and you’ve been advertised everywhere to defend your title in the main event of the biggest show your company will put on that year, it won’t matter to you that you need reconstructive neck surgery, or that landing the wrong way would probably limit you to only being able to enter buildings that have ramps. Like Charles Manson brainwashed his Family, the nature of professional wrestling can brainwash you to think it’s the right thing to grab a handful of pills and get ready to put Brock over.


As far as using illegal drugs and abusing alcohol is concerned, I can’t honestly say I would know the exact reason why drugs have been so prevalent in wrestling. I’ve heard in anecdotes from Shawn Michaels and Jake “The Snake” Roberts that there is/was a lot of partying going on with wrestlers, which could mean that wrestlers are being influenced by the backstage subculture of wrestling. High school football players can feel pressure to fit in and have a good time by drinking alcohol at the after game parties. Some college kids are much the same way. It can happen in many walks of life, really, and wrestling has been no different. I heard Jake say in an interview that during his second stint in WWE he did not drink, and that he was pressured by other wrestlers to hit the bars with them. I’ve read Jim Duggan being quoted as saying that drugs and alcohol are not as prevalent today as they were in the eighties, so I guess things have toned down. I’ve also read that some side effects from steroids include insomnia and irritability, and people who take steroids have claimed to have used illegal drugs to compensate for this, with a number of users having never used such drugs beforehand. And then there’s also substance abuse that is used to help cope physically and mentally with the grueling lifestyle of wrestling, which has also been discussed.

[Destor]

“Davey Boy Smith was found dead… an autopsy revealed that he had died due to heart related problems. He was only 39.” That’s not an exact quote from a news report, but it could have been and it still would have been true. The sad thing is, you could replace Smith’s name with Rick Rude, Eddie Guerrero, Eddie Gilbert, and Hawk, and you could replace “39” with various ages under 50 and it would still hold true. You can say that these men should have taken better care of themselves. And yes, they should have. But the serial killer is also responsible for their deaths. He has rarely physically carried out any murders on his own. But he knew what was going to happen when he made wrestlers think they had to look like they could bench press 400 lbs all while keeping a size 35 waist. It’s not like he didn’t know people were going to abuse pain killers and other drugs after he made them wrestle multiple times a week on a hard unforgiving surface. The rest of the world would probably want this killer caught dead or alive, and in the case of the latter, to be executed. But I say he should be caught alive, given treatment, and be allowed back into society.

Taking physical abuse comes with the territory in professional wrestling, but it also comes with other activities in life, too. In a physically demanding sport such as football, the athletes can not play more than one football game every six or seven days, and need at least a few months in the off season away from all the hitting to recoup. You can’t let football players play two to three games a week year round because it’s just inhuman. A running back who plays in a game every four days and gets tackled fifteen times a game by 250 plus pound men is going to feel like he’s in dire need of pain killers. Regardless of how much punishment each respective activity delivers, wrestling still dishes out quite a bit in its own right. Less demanding schedules need to be enforced. If that means generating less money so more human begins can live into their seventies, then you do what you know is the right thing to do.

Professional wrestling carries with it a sick attitude that wrestlers missing events is the end of the world. The fans are just as guilty of this as the wrestlers and promoters. Kurt Angle’s neck was in terrible condition going into Wrestlemania 19, to the point where one bad fall could have left him paralyzed. He felt that the show had to go on, and wrestled anyways. By all means he should be parking in handicapped spaces now, but managed to escape that fate. But let me ask you this? What did this man really risk his life for? Yes, it was the main event of the biggest show of the year. Over a million people would not have felt like they had gotten their forty some dollars’ worth, with similar phrases being said about the fans in the front row who probably paid a few hundred dollars for their seats. It would have left a major storyline to dangle or to culminate awkwardly at another event other than the one it was hyped for. But who the hell should honestly care about that when this man’s life is on the line? I liked Angle’s performance at WM 19, but I’m not sick enough to think it was remotely worth the risk. Ted Bundy raped women so he could live out his sexual fantasies, and then violently killed them to destroy any chance of them being a witness against them. He was a psychopath who would rather see people die in order to get sexual relief than to live like a normal human being. Are the promoters of wrestling this demented? Are the wrestlers this demented? Are we as wrestling fans this demented?


Seventy-nine famous wrestlers have died before the age of sixty since 1985. Some people will tell you that it was their own fault for dieing at such a young age. Some will say that pro wrestling should not be held responsible, and that they should have been strong enough to handle their temptations. I say that is true, but if you place a steak dinner in front of someone who hasn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, and tell him not to eat it, what do you think is going to happen? The industry needs to get rid of and/or add as much from/to the business as they reasonably need to so that their employees will be able to live to order off the senior citizens menu. Less demanding schedules should be enforced, as well as embodying an attitude that says that the show does not always have to go on, and that Shawn Michaels is not allowed to perform in the main event of Wrestlemania with a broken back, no matter what his passion for the business is like. The bottom line is that while no one forced these wrestlers to pursue wrestling, and that while they chose to live the lifestyles that they did, nothing was stopping wrestling from stepping in and telling them it wasn't worth it, and made everything more reasonable for them. They never did. Wrestling has blood on its hands. The current nature of the business is largely responsible for many premature deaths, and I want it brought it justice. It should be wanted by law enforcement, but it should be wanted alive. Many, many wrestlers are wanted alive.<!-- / message -->

[Destor]

An interesting read if nothing more

[Kris P Lettus]

Was this dude "tank" or whatever??

Pics??

[Destor]

http://www.ogpaper.com/images/wrestler-Chase-Tatum-dead-Atlanta-drug-overdose.jpg

[BigDaddyCool]

I've never heard of him. I wouldn't really call him a star.

[FourFifty]

The guy had enough time for a few matches and a cup of coffee in the wrestling industry. His death ranks right up there with Mass Transit.

[thedamndest]

Mass Transit is dead???

[Hanso Amore]

Chatse Tatum was known as Chase Tatum, tjhe White No Limit Soldier.

Teamed with 4 x 4

[FourFifty]

Mass Transit is dead???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Kulas
Rest In Peace
2002
:'(

[KingofOldSchool]

The dude looks like a cross between Val Venis and The Big Show.

[Jordan]

One of the few truly great WCW Superstars to never hold the title. It's a shame, a shame.

[Road Warrior]

An interesting read if nothing more

pretty much nothing more

[Road Warrior]

The West Texas Rednecks have them beat, Henning and Kendall Windham are dead, ha.

[Anybody Thrilla]

As long as Big Swoll is OK.

[Rollermacka]

As long as Big Swoll is OK.

Big Wha? I still cant remember him at all. I think there was a match at bash at the Beach 98 with the No Limit Soldiers Vs the West Texas Rednecks where you see any of the NLS wrestle besides Brian Armstrong, Rey Mysterio or Konan. Can anyone find the youtube video showing Chase SWOLL or 4X4 in the ring at all?

[Fox]

Former WCW Star Dies Of Possible Drug Overdose; Cena Wins.

[FourFifty]

I think it's times like this we should keep the memory of Mass Transit alive.

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